The present invention relates to furniture and, in particular, it concerns a folding construction for load-bearing furniture, and sets of such furniture.
It is known to provide folding chairs to allow convenient storage of spare chairs and seasonal garden furniture. Such chairs are usually built as rigid substructures made of wood, plastic or tube-metal which are hinged together so as to collapse to a reduced size for storage.
Since the substructures of such folding chairs are made of intrinsically rigid load-bearing materials, they are typically quite heavy and bulky. This weight and bulk makes them inconvenient to handle and transport, even when folded.
In an attempt to address this problem, a number of foldable structures have been proposed made from flexible sheet material such as cardboard. Examples of such structures may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,149,880 to Steuer, 3,178,227 to Snyder, 3,295,890 to Murdoch, 3,604,751 to Caigan, 4,085,970 to Klein, 4,556,253 to Geneve et al., 4,648,658 to Calco, 4,877,292 to Volpe et al., 4,984,848 to Scalisi et al. and 5,382,081 to Henry, as well as in German Patent No. 1,654,350 to Raacke. However, opening and closing of these structures typically involves a complicated sequence of folding.
A further shortcoming of conventional folding furniture is that it does not generally stack or otherwise pack conveniently. As a result, although each item individually may be relatively compact, handling a set of such furniture is usually inconvenient.
There is therefore a need for highly compact, light-weight folding furniture structures which are easily opened and closed. It would also be highly advantageous to provide a set of such furniture in which a number of separate items can be nested within a single item for convenient handling.